"You know the catapult is quite important. So I said, 'What is
this?' 'Sir, this is our digital catapult system.' He said,
'Well, we're going to this because we wanted to keep up with
modern [technology].' I said, 'You don't use steam anymore for
catapult?' 'No sir.' I said, 'Ah, how is it working?' 'Sir, not
good. Not good. Doesn't have the power. You know the steam is
just brutal. You see that sucker going, and steam's going all
over the place, there's planes thrown in the air.'

"It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is
digital? And it's very complicated. You have to be Albert
Einstein to figure it out. And I said — and now they want to buy
more aircraft carriers. I said, 'What system are you going to be'
— 'Sir, we're staying with digital.' I said, 'No you're not. You
going to goddamned steam. The digital costs hundreds of millions
of dollars more money and it's no good.'"

Trump visited the Ford in
March, giving a speech from the deck in which he talked about the
need for an increase to the defense budget. It's unclear whether
Trump's order to someone on board to use steam-powered catapults
will be carried out.

A Navy spokeswoman could not immediately comment when reached by
Business Insider.